Free, Open, Eating Its Young

The FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) world is cram-full of interesting, smart, fun people. It's also full of trolls, jerks, and abusive wastes of time, and very confused when it comes to civility. A lot of FOSSers fall into the Five Geek Social Fallacies trap, especially the first two:

Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil

"GSF1 prevents its carrier from participating in -- or tolerating -- the exclusion of anyone from anything, be it a party, a comic book store, or a web forum, and no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or aromatic the prospective excludee may be. As a result, nearly every geek social group of significant size has at least one member that 80% of the members hate, and the remaining 20% merely tolerate."